2-Port USB Home Travel Charger for Apple iPhone / iPod (Black)

Any time I purchase an item this inexpensive, I'm always apprehensive about connecting it to a considerably more expensive device and risk damaging the connected device.

Therefore I decided to evaluate this charger with a dummy-load. I measured the charging current draw of my old Sansa MP3 player, which was nominally 180ma. For USB, the charger should maintain nominal output voltage of 5VDC, under various loads. Here are the results of the evaluation.
Open-circuit (no load) output voltage: 5.15VDC
Output voltage with 10 ohm (10 watt) resistor: 4.83VDC (ripple less then 200mv, sawtooth waveform, 30KHz, nominal current draw 480ma).

I burned-in the device under continuous load for 24 hours; the re-measured output voltage showed no substantial change. Also, after the burn-in period, the 2.4 watt load draw did not result in a significant temperature rise felt in the charger itself.

Disclaimer: These results are for the single unit I...Read more

This item failed on first use. When I opened it up (I'm an electrical engineer... I had to open it, didn't I?) I found a decent circuit board, average components and the worst soldering job ever. What failed? The wires that were soldered to the back of the steel plug blades were cold soldered and came apart. Plus the blades were held in place with a friction fit which also failed, leaving exposed metal in the socket when the plug came apart. Construction is so bad that I estimate that the electrical integrity is likely just as bad and may actually harm delicate electronics like cell phones. Be careful and avoid this one!!!!

I spent a considerable amount of time reading various reviews on the lowest priced USB wall chargers and other plugin chargers for the Apple iPod Touch.

The majority of them had a very large amount of poor reviews that included problems such as breaking, not working, malfunctioning and cause problems with devices used with, etc... So, consequently I was afraid I may be wasting my money on a product that might not even work cause the price is just so super cheap.. 15 cents for a USB charger + $2.97 shipping... I thought, yeah, right.. it can't possibly be that good for this price, particularly when Apple sells their made in china OEM for $30 and UP, but hey, for this price I figured I'd take a chance since it worked well for the other 4 whom left reviews, and I am glad I did.

It works and charges well. If you need a battery charger for your ipod or iphone for when you're not home or at a computer, this is a must have item. You don't need to spend $30...Read more